Liz got to her feet and smoothed her skirt. I noticed now that she was dressed in her best tweed Chanel suit, ready to face her opponents in pearls and vintage couture. “This schedule change is meant to unnerve us. We mustn’t let it.”

Liz and Ann went on ahead while Soheila stayed behind to help me apply make-up over the marks on my face. She used a touch of Aelvesgold and said a spell that she told me her sisters used to cover wrinkles. “Better than Botox,” she assured me.

I dressed carefully in my best interview suit. For luck, I pinned on a brooch my father had given me. It was fashioned out of two interlocking hearts – a Scottish design called a Luckenbooth brooch. Downstairs I tossed Wheelock in my leather briefcase. When Soheila gave me a look I told her about the footnote.

“If the icon has a door on it, that means only a doorkeeper can read the spell,” she said. “Be careful, though. Those correlative spells can be very dangerous.”

So everyone kept telling me.

We walked together to Beckwith Hall on the campus where the meeting was being held. It had stopped raining. The day had turned muggy and hot, the air holding a sultry threat of another downpour.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I said as we walked. “If Duncan is really the incubus why don’t I feel more attracted to him? Whenever he tried to kiss me, I pushed him away.”

“Hm.” Soheila tilted her head and looked at me, then touched her hand to my arm. “Maybe it’s the wards that are keeping him away.”

“They didn’t the first time,” I argued, “with Liam.”

Soheila shrugged and hugged her arms around herself. “Maybe you are becoming stronger. A very strong human can resist the pull of an incubus.”

I told her then about the dreams.

“Oh,” she said. “But still, you resisted him in the flesh and …” She slanted her eyes toward me and the corner of her mouth tugged into a half smile. “You slept with someone else, didn’t you? That fellow Bill?”

I blushed, but there was no point lying to Soheila. “Yes. It sort of just happened. He was there after I was attacked and was so sweet.”

“It’s good you’ve moved on to someone else. It means you’re breaking the hold the incubus had on you. It’s better this way. There’s no future in a relationship between a human and one of his kind.”

I had a feeling we weren’t talking about me anymore. “Frank would miss you if you went, Soheila. We all would, but Frank most of all.”